Practice makes perfect? – or does it?
I once heard a coach say, “If you would only practice perfectly, then you wouldn’t have to practice so much!” He was being sarcastic of course, but underlying his facetious comment lay a grain of truth.
How do you approach your practice?
Do you arrive mentally alert and prepare your body to dance by warming up or do you grab a Venti Americano from Starbucks, throw on your dance shoes and mark through your rumba sloppily a few times before you feel ready to start your lesson or rehearsal?
I would make an educated guess that most of you fall in the latter category- and I get it- there’s normal life, schedules, and deadlines all competing for our focus and time. But what if we approached our practice differently? What if we tried to dance perfectly every time?
Now this suggestion is not meant to throw all you A-Types into a tale spin of rigidity or suggest a neurotic behavior of chasing perfection that will only backfire. Instead, let’s take a look at how to get the most out of our practice.
We all know that the only way to refine a skill is through the tried and true method of repetition. The body needs repetition to learn and it also needs the mind involved to apply a purpose to that repetition.
This is where the HLT training method can serve you well. Champions Decho and Bree have broken down Sam Sodano’s method in exacting detail and will guide you through each and every important aspect, from how to place your foot using the proper opposition of the other foot, how maximizing the delay of certain actions creates the proper characteristic for each Rhythm dance and how what we do between the steps is essential for more control and rhythmical interpretation which ultimately leads to better results.
Coaching is also a key ingredient to move up the ladder- however, coaching on a daily basis is not financially feasible for most of us. This is where the HLT training method comes to the rescue! For a one-time-only purchase price you are able to access the HLT champions teaching you all the details of the Hip Lift Technique for all five dances as often as you want!
Get the most out of the HLT program and use it every day!
So take a moment of reflection and consider how you approach your practice. Will the HLT online training course improve your dancing? The experts certainly believe it will- which is why Sam Sodano didn’t just tape a seminar- he took six years to develop his method before putting it online. “All dances need structure to develop and improve,” states Sam.
So before the next comp, review your approach to practice. Examine the structure you apply and whether you are making the most of your rehearsal time.
No one is perfect. That’s impossible to attain. But you can get close by starting to perfect your practice methods.
In my next article we’ll take a look at how other champions prepare and see what we can learn from their success.
In the meantime, happy dancing and get hip with HLT!